His reign opened brilliantly with a campaign in the Italian peninsula, which left him after the battle of Marignano, master of the Milanese and of northern Italy.

He need not trouble himself as had his predecessors about recalcitrant and scheming nobles.

They had never been heard from since Louis XI.

took them in hand.

Neither were the States-General going to annoy him by assertion of rights and demands for reforms.
They too had become almost non-existent; it having been well established that only the direst emergency would ever call them into being again.